Prisoner
by secooper87
Summary: Elizabeth waits in the darkness of her own mind.


Author's Note: Hey everyone!

A short little story, which takes place in the alternate version of time in which Buffy traveled with the Doctor, changed her name to Elizabeth, and eventually went crazy.

We saw the beginnings of this in "Elizabeth".

Of course, that story took place years ago, before Sunnydale was destroyed. Last time we saw Elizabeth, she mentioned that she and the Doctor, in one of their final trips, had intersected Elizabeth's own timeline, and arrived in 2003. They'd caught a glimpse of Elizabeth's future, and it terrified Elizabeth to no end.

Well. Now, the future's finally caught up to her.

Be prepared for a very different Elizabeth...

Enjoy!

* * *

She waits in the darkness of her own mind.

Outside, she can hear soldiers pacing around, guns in hand. They've learned her tricks, over the years. Her traps. They think they are prepared.

Imbeciles.

Seven years ago, when she began her imprisonment, she would not harm a living person to escape. She had morals. Scruples. Beliefs and dreams and regrets and a spark of light inside of her.

Now… nothing but darkness.

She will get out of this prison, someday, she knows. Even if she has to wade through the blood of every jailer here, she will escape. She will be free.

In the meantime… she waits.

And plans.

* * *

Willow wheels her wheelchair into the visiting room, on the other side of the bullet-proof glass. There's that terrible look of loss and pity and sorrow on Willow's face, as she approaches — as if she were somehow better than her one-time friend.

"Enough magical energy to bring back the dead," she tells Willow, through the receiver, "and you're still wandering around as a cripple."

Willow winces at this. She abused magic, once, in the past. She won't do it again — not even to heal herself.

"How you doing, Elizabeth?" Willow asks, trying to change the subject.

Elizabeth leans down, eyes level with Willow's. She can feel her fingers tapping in time to the throbbing pain in her head, and she can't stop it, anymore. Has long given up trying.

"Trying to play the devoted-best-friend, being all with the I-forgive-yous?" Elizabeth snaps. Shakes her head. "You're not fooling anyone, Will. Give it up."

Once again, that disgusting look of pity floods across Willow's face. It's enough to make Elizabeth want to retch. Back in 2003, Willow had believed in her! She'd fought for Elizabeth, been crippled in the name of Elizabeth's cause! Willow will never walk again, now!

But Willow doesn't feel triumphant or empowered. No. All Willow feels… is pity.

Towards Elizabeth!

"I told you," says Willow, and her voice shakes a little, as she says it, "you'll always be my best friend. No matter what your… illness… does to you."

"You still think I'm nuts, huh?" says Elizabeth. She shoots Willow a large grin. "Well, guess what? I'm not. I'm plain old Elizabeth. Like always." Her voice lowers, her eyes shining. "Just… better. Cleverer. More powerful."

"And was I that much better, when I abused magic?" asks Willow. She clutches the receiver, willing the words to sink in. "You used to be a good person, Elizabeth. A hero. Saving the world and doing good deeds. And now… just look at yourself!"

It's been a long time since Elizabeth looked at herself. Can barely remember her physical appearance, anymore.

They gave her a mirror, once.

She smashed it into little tiny bits. Seven years be damned.

(Elizabeth makes her own luck, now.)

"You have to admit you have a problem," Willow pleads, because she always pleads. "It's like you've turned into a different person or something. When you go on your rants, you… you… don't even sound like yourself!" She shakes her head. "Whatever's happened to you, if you just admit it… you can get better. I believe in you."

That's a lie, and Elizabeth knows it.

Once, Willow _had_ believed in her. Back in those early days, when Elizabeth was first locked up in here. Back when Xander had actually stood to visit her, and Willow's visits were a daily routine.

So many years ago…

"This is who I am, now," says Elizabeth. "I've accepted it. Maybe you should, too." She shrugs. Flicks her hair back over her shoulders. "What if I'm not going insane? What if this is the real me, deep down inside, and all the niceness and goodness and whatever was just some façade?"

"I've talked to the UNIT people," says Willow. "They say… when the world's in danger, and they ask for your help… you still save it for them."

Elizabeth says nothing to this.

Can't deny it.

She doesn't know why she does it. Some vestigial lingering of her former self, maybe. A subconscious action. One last attempt to convince herself she might actually be a hero, and not a villain.

"You see?" says Willow. "Inside, you're still all apocalypse preventing and stuff! Like you were with…"

Willow stops. And Elizabeth shoots her a cold glare.

"…with the Doctor, you mean?" Elizabeth whispers, and her voice is icy and deadly. Her malice seeping through every single word. "That bastard."

Willow sighs. Not this, again.

"Elizabeth, please — you've spent so many years harboring this grudge against the Doctor," says Willow, leaning in, her every word filled with intensity. "I don't care if he actually did anything or not. Just… let it go. Forgive and move on. For _your_ sake."

Forgive?

Forgive?!

Elizabeth surges forwards, rage sweeping across her, and if it weren't for the glass, she'd tear Willow apart for saying that. Tear her apart for even daring to sympathize with that… that… monster!

Then Elizabeth remembers she's a monster, now, too.

Sits back down. Composes herself.

"I'll never stop hating him," Elizabeth replies, calmly. Gives a cold smile. "Sometimes… I think my hatred's the only thing that keeps me going, day after day." She puts a hand on the glass. "Someday, after I've taken over the world and sent the Doctor to his death… you'll see that I'm right. Trust me."

* * *

Willow tells her about Xander, sometimes. Occasionally, she even makes up an excuse for his not visiting her.

Elizabeth knows the truth.

Xander is scared of her.

(And so he should be.)

Elizabeth lies down on the bed, in her cell. Staring up at the drab gray ceiling. The pounding in her head is strong. The darkness all-consuming.

She's manipulated her friends many times before to try to escape, of course. Has tried every single trick in the book, thousands of times. She's even gone crying to Willow, saying she's sorry and she's all better, now, trying to give Willow enough hope to make her beg UNIT to let Elizabeth go.

They never do.

Ultimately, UNIT is under the Doctor's thumb, and he'll always make sure Elizabeth is never free, again.

She never sees him, of course. The UNIT people are far too terrified she'll kill him. But whenever she makes a prison break that gets too close to succeeding, she can feel the Doctor's hand moving against her, in the counter-attack. Can see all those worthless apes suddenly doing something smart, for once, and managing to foil her completely.

And after they lock her up, again, she bangs her fists against the door and threatens the Doctor with every last scrap of breath she has in her. For days.

She wonders if he ever hears it.

And if his bleeding hearts feel anything, when he does.

Elizabeth taps her fingers against her stomach, eyes fixed on the ceiling, thinking this all through. Planning her next escape, figuring out who she'll need to kill and just how to do it, when…

The landscape shifts around her. And… for a few seconds… she thinks she can feel the wind through her hair. Thinks she can smell car exhaust and flowers and fresh air. Thinks she can hear the laughter of people, nearby, and… yes. Yes! She can see it. Can see… a handsome guy in a World War II military greatcoat, as he turns and winks at her, saying, "Hey, what happens at the Venusian Cocktail Lounge stays at the Venusian Cocktail Lounge."

Elizabeth jerks upright in her prison bed. Eyes wide.

The vision is gone.

But it was clear. So clear. She could feel the mind of someone else, briefly mingling with her own. The mind of someone so… the same, but so… different. Her, but… still full of light and goodness and laughter. Full of freedom.

The other mind hadn't noticed her.

Interesting.

Very interesting.

* * *

The machine Elizabeth needs to activate is on the other side of the door. She built it last time she was permitted outside. She has the energy pack from an alien gun in the prison cell, with her — a little something she pocketed, on a previous trip.

Now… she just has to connect the two. And activate the machine.

The prison is on a gentle slope.

She pours out her pitcher of water in a gentle trickle. Enough to let it roll downhill, under the crack at the bottom of the door, and all the way to her machine — in a thin but steady stream. Then she activates the energy pack.

Outside, she can hear the machine churn into life. Can hear it tearing open a hole into the vortex, and letting in the Vortisaur Elizabeth had been psychically luring here for the past few weeks.

The screams of the UNIT men, as they die, makes a grin crawl across Elizabeth's face.

Escape.

At last.

She rushes to the door, using the method she worked out months ago to open her prison cell from the inside. Opens the door and steps through — out of prison, and into the death and devastation she's caused.

Then… she stops, in the threshold.

A deep chill overtaking her.

And a feeling not her own. A feeling of horror. Disgust. A need to run out and help the dying, help the wounded. A feeling that runs through her so strongly that… for a moment… she almost thinks maybe it's 1998, and she's just 17-year-old Buffy, again, the hero who saves lives and does her best to help.

Elizabeth blinks.

And the feeling goes away.

Weird.

Elizabeth races out of her prison cell, into the open, and then turns on her heel and rushes out towards freedom. Towards the exit.

Willow's there to stop her, this time. Her hands aglow with mystical energy, as she banishes the Vortisaur and creates a mystical barrier to hold Elizabeth back. Xander stands just behind Willow, pushing her wheelchair, a look of utter rage on his face as he glares at Elizabeth through sightless eyes.

Elizabeth hasn't seen Xander in two years.

The UNIT people all come to back Willow up, as her magic ebbs, and under a tremendous strain, Willow is forced to let go of the mystical energy before it destroys her, completely. She looks pale and tired from the effort.

Xander puts a hand on her shoulder to comfort her, as she pants for breath.

"You... have to stop this, Elizabeth," Willow gasps. "Doing these kinds of things… tearing into the time vortex… you're going… to kill… everyone."

That's hardly the important part, of course.

No. What's important is that Elizabeth was about to escape, and Willow stopped her. Willow and Xander. Whom she once considered her best friends.

Her 'Scoobies'.

Elizabeth meets Willow's eyes with a dark stare, even as she feels the UNIT soldiers tug her hands behind her back and restrain her.

"Best friend, huh, Will?" says Elizabeth, with a bitter laugh. "Yeah. Keep thinking that."

Willow opens her mouth to reply, but Xander cuts in, first.

"It's not her, anymore, Willow," says Xander. His voice soft, coaxing. Almost melancholy. He pats Willow's shoulder. "Elizabeth died a long time ago. All that's left is the insanity."

Elizabeth laughs.

Because she knows she's stronger this way. Better this way. This is her birthright. Her greatest triumph and greatest evolution. And they're too simple-minded to know it.

"That why you're too terrified to come visit me?" Elizabeth demands of him.

Xander snaps his head up to Elizabeth. His voice suddenly colder and icier than Elizabeth's ever heard it, before.

"People like you are why they invented capital punishment," says Xander. His hands shake with utter fury. "You should be on death row right now — but a lot of people owe the Doctor favors, and he wants you kept alive." His sightless eyes narrow. "Remember that. If it wasn't for the Doctor, you'd be dead by now."

Elizabeth feels the pounding in her head getting louder and louder, the pain eclipsing everything inside of her, as she hears the Doctor's name. She hates him. Hates him more than anything else!

She struggles, as UNIT drags her off. Struggles and screams obscenities at the Doctor who's tortured her and destroyed her like this.

"See?" says Xander to Willow. His voice so tired and weary. "She's gone, Will. Completely gone."

Elizabeth is locked up, again.

And… there's something inside her mind. Some spark of light in the darkness. A spark of something she once had, long wiped-out by imprisonment and the pounding in her head.

She falls to the floor. Weeping for the friends she's lost.

A minute later, the spark is gone. Elizabeth gets up. Feeling nothing.

Just cursing herself for her moment of weakness.

* * *

"I went to another world, once," says Elizabeth to the shrink who claims he'll 'cure' her. "An alternate timeline. I've been thinking a lot about that, recently." She crosses her arms. Levels a challenging stare at him. "You don't believe me, huh?"

The shrink doesn't.

But he humors her, anyways.

"Thing is… in that world… I had a sister," Elizabeth muses. "They said… she was a trans-dimensional Key. Something so incredible that even hell goddesses sought her out for her power."

The shrink mutters something about a need to belong and the importance of family and some crap about Elizabeth's guilt over her mother's death. Which Elizabeth ignores.

Moron.

"She's still out there," says Elizabeth. "Somewhere. Poor, scared little Dawnie. I tried to help her, once." She laughs, shaking her hair behind her shoulders. "I could manipulate her so easily, now!"

The shrink just carries on trying to cure Elizabeth. Cure her?! Like he can even touch her!

He's nothing compared to her.

"The Doctor was in that world, too," says Elizabeth. "Older. Different face. But the same, inside." Her eyes glow at the memory. "I almost killed him. Got to see him writhe in agony and choke on his own guilt. I'll never forget that. Highlight of my life."

The shrink clears his throat. "Your friend, Xander, is right," he says, softly. "Your life has been spared only because of the Doctor." He leans in, trying to stare deep into her eyes. "The Doctor isn't your enemy, Elizabeth."

"Yes, he is," Elizabeth insists. "He destroyed Sunnydale!"

"_You_ destroyed Sunnydale," the shrink says. "You blinded Xander, crippled Willow. Killed thousands of people. Not the Doctor. _You_."

"That's a lie and you know it," Elizabeth snaps. "I'm innocent."

"You are suffering from severe psychotic episodes and an extreme case of denial," the shrink tells her. "The sooner you face up to your problems, the sooner you can solve them."

"My problems?!" Elizabeth shouts. "They're the Doctor's problems! He's the psychopath! I'm innocent!"

The shrink tries again.

Will always try again.

Elizabeth rolls her eyes, and tunes him out. UNIT. Those Doctor-worshipping maniacs.

When she gets out of here, she'll wipe them all out. Decapitate the jerks and shove their heads on pikes for the injustice they've done her.

After all.

_She's_ not the one with psychotic tendencies. _She's_ entirely innocent.

She spends the rest of the therapy session trying to imagine all the ways she could make this shrink really suffer and writhe, before he dies along with the rest of the UNIT quacks.

* * *

Elizabeth first learns about the alternate-timeline-daughter-of-hers in a dream that isn't her own. A dream shared by her other-self.

At first, Elizabeth can't see the child. There is no image of the daughter, in the dream. Just a deep, overwhelming sense of love from her other-self.

It's a love so beautiful and bright, it illuminates Elizabeth's mind for nearly a minute, banishing the phantoms and headaches and horrors that have overtaken her, in these past seven years.

Love. And a name.

_Seo._

Elizabeth sees her, a little, as time passes. Sees this not-daughter of hers, in snatches and snippets of memories and dreams and visions passed between her and her other-self.

Seo is never clear. She's a blob, a haze, but Elizabeth gets to know her, anyways. Seo. Who pretends to be impassive and superior, yet cares so deeply for others that her compassion blazes through the darkness like the brightest ray of sunlight.

Once, in a dream from other-her, the girl turned and smiled at Elizabeth. And the smile _burned_.

Elizabeth doesn't know Seo. Didn't encounter the girl during her trip to the other timeline. Doesn't understand who other-her married to wind up with Seo, or how Seo can be a teenager when she hadn't even been born, back in 2000. In fact, Elizabeth really has no idea who or what Seo is.

But she knows one thing.

Dawn is the Key. And… somehow… for a reason Elizabeth doesn't understand… Seo is, too.

Elizabeth stares at the ceiling of her cell. Imagining what it would feel like to have a daughter. Someone so much like her, yet so different — a little person she could hold and care for and love.

"Maybe, if she were mine," Elizabeth says, "I wouldn't be in here. Maybe I'd be out there, running around free, like you. Maybe I'd stop being the monster the Doctor made me."

Elizabeth thinks about this a long time.

About her spoiled-rotten other-self, Buffy, handed everything on a silver platter. Handed a daughter and a sister and friends who didn't stab her in the back all the time! Living in her perfect little house in her perfect little town, where everyone loved and adored her.

That… Buffy.

That imbecilic goody-goody alter-ego!

By the end, Elizabeth realizes… if she ever gets her hands on that little girl… she'd want to crush the life out of her, forever.

While Buffy watches.

That'd be perfect.

* * *

Then… one day… at 8:40 am, Greenwich Mean Time, every single child across the world stops.

And Elizabeth begins to feel something tugging at her mind.

It's as if she and her goody-goody-other-self are two sides to a piece of paper, and the paper is finally wearing too thin. Elizabeth gets flashes as if… she _is_ other-her. Bits of memory and knowledge that come from nowhere, things only other-her would ever know.

Memories of Alison Korjensky and grown-up Dawn and Ria Hiskaloph.

Memories of working for something called Torchwood — a group that doesn't even exist here.

Even flashes of visions of things happening in the other timeline — of the 456 descending down to Earth in a pillar of fire, of the children freezing and not being able to move, of some total idiot in a suit who keeps interrogating her and some other idiot who keeps trying to poison her. Of Cleveland and the Slayer Institute.

And then… Elizabeth realizes.

Her other-self _isn't_ getting the same thing.

No. Her other-self is being swamped by too many timelines and too many alternates. She can't handle what's happening to her. She's vulnerable.

Elizabeth is the powerful one.

And so Elizabeth begins to reach out with her mind. Coax the connection, make sure it's established more with _her_ than with the other alternates. It's enough that Elizabeth wonders if she could just step into other-her's mind and sever the link to her home-reality completely.

But she slips up.

Mentions Iphidrin.

Goody-goody Buffy gets wise, and subconsciously manages to push Elizabeth out.

Ultimately, though, it doesn't really matter.

Elizabeth's playing the long game. She's been listening. Learning. Watching. She is patient, absorbing the situation as it unfolds. Both in that timeline, and in this, the 456 have descended to Earth, demanding 10% of their children. Both in that timeline, and in this, the governments don't seem to know what to do.

No one knows why their every attempt to subvert the 456 fails.

No one except Elizabeth.

Elizabeth thinks through what she's learned from her other-self. About the Crystallizer. About the Time Lords. About why the human race can't possibly win.

In Elizabeth's own world, UNIT comes for her.

Drags her out of her cell, and into their lab. The way they always do, when they want her to save the world for them.

Elizabeth looks right into all of their eyes. Her captors. Her tormentors. Her enemies. They've been praying for the Doctor to show up and save them, but he hasn't come — and so they are trusting her. Relying on that last little spark of decency left inside of her.

"Save the children," they say.

Elizabeth smiles at them. Eyes twinkling. And tells them one word.

"No."

* * *

She can feel the world shattering around her, tumbling into anarchy and chaos, and a deep sense of pride and accomplishment swells inside of her, as she knows that _she_ — Elizabeth Anne Summers — has caused it.

She runs from her prison.

The UNIT base is now being swarmed and overrun by the angry mob. They've all found out that their children aren't being 'inoculated', that they aren't coming back. They've also found out just where their children were really taken, and for what purpose. Learned that their precious little kids are being used as drugs for a bunch of two-headed aliens.

They know this because Elizabeth's made sure they know. Made sure the world knows.

Made sure it crumbled into chaos and anarchy.

Elizabeth runs. This time, no one can stop her escape. Not Willow. Not Xander. Not UNIT.

Not even the Doctor.

But she isn't done, yet. Not by a long-shot.

There's an other-her out there. An other-her that's been handed a life she doesn't deserve, a life that's too easy, too warm and fuzzy and good, too filled with light and happiness. An other-her with a family and a purpose and a title as savior of the world.

An other-her who thinks she's _better_!

As if!

Time to do something about that.

"I'm coming for you, Buffy," says Elizabeth. She laughs. "Oh, yes. I'm coming for you. And super-strength or no… you'll never know what hit you, when you fall into my hands."


End file.
